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Articles by Kayvan Kian
Council Post: How Pre-Mortems Can Help Young Leaders Prevent Post-Mortems
Kayvan Kian is the author of What Is Water? and a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, where he founded the Young Leaders Forum. getty The project you invested everything in has failed. The business partner you trusted is now in prison. The team you lead no longer trusts your leadership. Take a deep breath. These events haven’t happened yet and will hopefully never happen. But how would you feel if they did happen?
Council Post: How (Ir)reversibility Can Help Young Leaders In Uncertain Times
Kayvan Kian is the author of What Is Water? and a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, where he founded the Young Leaders Forum. getty It’s another busy week packed with meetings, calls, important presentations and unforeseen issues that need your attention. When you sit down at your desk, you start going through a stack of agreements that require your signature.
Council Post: How Your Values Can Guide You In Ambiguous Times
Kayvan Kian is the author of What Is Water? and a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, where he founded the Young Leaders Forum. getty There are moments in life where you come across a clear answer to a complex problem: your financial calculations show that you shouldn’t invest in a business idea, the law requires specific clauses that you need to include in a new contract or you’ve experienced a certain situation so often before that the course ahead is quite evident.
Council Post: How Young Leaders Can Develop Their Own Life Philosophies
Kayvan Kian is the author of What Is Water? and a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, where he founded the Young Leaders Forum.
How Hippocrates Can Help Young Leaders Prevent Unintended Harm
Kayvan Kian is the author of What Is Water? and a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, where he founded the Young Leaders Forum. getty A major airline wanted to improve the experience customers had on their planes, so engineers created a new technology that drastically reduced the noise in the cabin during flight. A daycare center that was tired of parents picking up their kids after hours installed a special fine that charged parents if they arrived late to pick up their child.
How Cicero Can Help Young Leaders Rediscover The Art Of Praise
Kayvan Kian is the author of What Is Water? and a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he founded the Young Leaders Forum. getty You might have noticed the following pattern at work: A colleague who doesn’t feel appreciated decides to leave the organization. However, once this decision is announced, others start sharing their fondness, admiration and praise for the departing colleague’s character and accomplishments well until after their official farewell.
How Thales Can Help Young Leaders Recognize Patterns
Kayvan Kian is the author of What Is Water? and a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he founded the Young Leaders Forum. Getty Many leaders these days find themselves in the middle of a constant stream of ever-increasing information overload from more and more sources: email, news outlets, social media, messaging apps and conversations with colleagues, friends and family.
How Kant Can Help Young Leaders Gain The Courage To Think For Themselves
Kayvan Kian is the author of What Is Water? and a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he founded the Young Leaders Forum. getty With today’s opportunities to follow the opinions of more people than ever, it’s become easier to outsource many aspects of our thinking. From your health to your finances, you only need to seemingly find the right expert(s), after which not much thinking is required on your part. This sort of cognitive autopilot can also exist in our professional lives.
How Occam Can Help Young Leaders Save Time And Energy
Kayvan Kian is the author of What Is Water? and a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he founded the Young Leaders Forum. getty Your team hasn’t responded to your series of questions, even though they usually do within 24 hours. The launch of your new product didn’t create a peak in sales, even though your focus groups seemed very enthusiastic. A potential candidate turned down an offer to work with you, even though, on paper, it would have been a perfect match.
How Cleobulus Can Help Young Leaders Survive Both Prosperous And Hard Times
Kayvan Kian is the author of What Is Water? and a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he founded the Young Leaders Forum. Getty If you’ve been in business for a while, you know that it is filled with both highs and lows, times that are prosperous and times that are tough. On both sides of the coin, it is tempting to respond a certain way. When times are good, we may be tempted to take it easy and stop doing the things that led to our success.
Heraclitus Can Help Young Leaders Get Unstuck In A Changing World
Photo: Getty We live and work in a world that can be described as VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Things are changing so fast it's hard to know what's coming next, and since the world is more interconnected than ever before, many young leaders would say they aren't even sure what they need to know. That said, you could argue things have always been this way.
How Bruce Lee Can Help Young Leaders Adapt And Overcome Obstacles
Photo: Getty Have you ever experienced a time in your career where it seemed like everything was going wrong, just as you were trying to launch a company or start a new project? Your budget request was denied for a second time. The first version of your product didn't turn out as expected. The partnership you envisioned didn't come to fruition. Customer feedback on your initial offering was disappointing.
How Nietzsche Can Help Young Leaders Live A Regret-Free Life
Photo: Getty Whether they're fresh out of college or settled in their careers, young leaders can sometimes find themselves so busy in their daily responsibilities that they set aside — or lose sight of — the bigger picture for their life and career. You might be feeling that way right now. Perhaps there's an initiative you'd like to try at work, a company you want to start or a career change you're interested in making.
BookLife Prize Nonfiction Contest Names Four Finalists
Four books were named finalists for the 2019 BookLife Prize Nonfiction Contest. Each book was selected by a noteworthy author who served as a guest judge in one of four genres. The finalists are: Memoir/Autobiography Fierce: Essays by and About Dauntless Women edited by Karyn Kloumann "The 13 essays in this collection are as bold and unique as the women that inspired them.
6 ways to thrive in an out-of-control world
• A 'VUCA' – volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous – world makes leadership increasingly difficult. • Leaders can start by learning to lead themselves. • The six steps below can help clarify your decision-making. Young people entering the workforce today are often distressed. This was true when I first noticed it about seven years ago, as the project leader for a non-profit in the Netherlands, and it’s certainly true today. On that project years ago, the non-profit’s volunteers seemed overwhelmed.
How Democritus Can Help Young Leaders Connect Theory With Practice
Photo: Getty Writer and university professor David Foster Wallace said, “The most dangerous thing about an academic education is that it enables my tendency to overintellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract thinking instead of simply paying attention to what’s going on in front of me.” The ancient thinker Democritus is considered by many to be the father of modern science and is known for his theory that everything is made of atoms.
How Socrates Can Help Leaders Prevent Irreversible Mistakes
Success in business has a way of breeding overconfidence in one's decision-making, especially after it follows a longer period of good results. It's tempting to bask in the glory of a job well-done and assume that things will continue to go well because of your sound judgment. In these scenarios, leaders also run the risk of surrounding themselves with "yes people" who encourage, applaud and approve everything they're doing.
Finding Support: Who Is Already There For You?
Getting promoted into a leadership role is an exciting opportunity in your professional journey. However, what you might notice after a few months in your new role is a sense of increasing loneliness. The team members you used to chat with don't always want to chat with their team leader. Those you once turned to for career advice are now your peers, so now the advice might not come as freely. There's a reason the saying "it's lonely at the top" entered our public lexicon.
Finding Meaning In Surprising Places
Throughout human history, we've sought to find meaning in life and the events around us. A deep sense of meaning has helped us endure. Take, for example, the myth of Odysseus. After being away from home for 10 years fighting in the Trojan War, Odysseus and his men set sail to return. Despite Athena's help, their journey was still riddled with dangerous mythical creatures, difficult seas and many strokes of bad fortune. This journey home cost them another 10 years of their lives.
Aristotle can help young leaders create meaning in difficult moments
November 18, 2019A young entrepreneur felt stuck on a Tuesday afternoon: The new version of a product turned out to have some unexpected flaws, one of the co-founders wasn’t reachable abroad, and a potential investor had postponed the decision to invest by another week. We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
Aristotle can help young leaders create meaning in difficult moments
When times are difficult, building virtues could be the single source of meaning that could help you pull through, as they have done for countless others in the past. A young entrepreneur felt stuck on a Tuesday afternoon: The new version of a product turned out to have some unexpected flaws, one of the co-founders wasn’t reachable abroad, and a potential investor had postponed the decision to invest by another week.
Clear Out the Noise To Prevent Unnecessary Negativity
It’s not always apparent how negative something really is. If you don’t take the time to assess upsets, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of exposure to negativity you might have through your daily communications and media consumption. Therefore, like seasoned mathematicians, it can be helpful to focus on ways to increase the ratio of positivity simply by decreasing the level of unnecessary negativity in our lives; in other words, clearing out the noise.
How to identify the skills that energize you
By Kayvan Kian7 minute Read Is there something you’re not particularly good at, but that gives you energy when you do it? We call these skills “hidden treasures” and the answers we’ve received from young leaders relate to things outside of work like playing soccer, writing poetry, or playing guitar. There’s nothing wrong with these answers, but what’s consistent is that they tend to overlook skills that relate to their job.
Is This Relationship Going Anywhere?
The two of you have been together for a couple of months, maybe even a couple of years, and have reached the point where you are comfortable, and yet your relationship seems to be stuck in a rut. A relationship often heads towards serious commitment and in many cases, to marriage. Is your relationship heading somewhere or has just hit a pause?
Some of your talents and skills can cause burnout. Here’s how to identify them
Over the past decade, we’ve seen a collective shift in the way we approach our unique skills. Previously, the focus was on improving things you’re not good at. Now, to succeed in a world that is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA), the common belief is that doing what you’re good at is the best approach. In a way, this shift makes sense. Organizations are less hierarchical and structured now.
6 pieces of wisdom to help young leaders thrive in uncertain times
June 3, 2019In a world that feels increasingly uncertain, young people entering the workforce are often struggling to find their path, experiencing a mix of anxiety, enthusiasm, anticipation and high expectations. Many young people today also feel impatient and are asking: How can I lead, grow, thrive and make a difference? It’s a difficult question to answer, and I have certainly been through and observed many of the emotions they are experiencing.
6 pieces of wisdom to help young leaders thrive in uncertain times
A few considerations that help with life’s biggest decisions, but also with its mundane, daily difficulties. In a world that feels increasingly uncertain, young people entering the workforce are often struggling to find their path, experiencing a mix of anxiety, enthusiasm, anticipation and high expectations. Many young people today also feel impatient and are asking: How can I lead, grow, thrive and make a difference?
Millennials: Fardo, bênção, ou ambos?
Dar atenção às reivindicações dos Millennials pode melhorar o ambiente de trabalho. We recently came across the following quote about the younger generation: Because all the peoples of the world are part of one electronically based, intercommunicating network, young people everywhere share a kind of experience that none of the elders ever had. . . . This break between generations is wholly new: it is planetary and universal. Cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote these words in 1970.
Millennials: Burden, blessing, or both?
Companies often complain about the unrealistic expectations of millennial workers, but heeding their call to action can improve the work environment for everyone. We recently came across the following quote about the younger generation: Because all the peoples of the world are part of one electronically based, intercommunicating network, young people everywhere share a kind of experience that none of the elders ever had. . . .
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